What irks me most is that nobody bats an eye when we devote resources to let the most promising athletes and musicians develop their skills in specialized, exclusive settings, but a promising mathematician?
In my elementary school there was a one-morning-a-week enrichment program for GATE kids, but some of my classmates left for a dedicated GATE school. When I met them again in middle school--which was my normal in-bound school but also had a GATE track and might have been the GATE destination--it seemed to me that the kids who went to the GATE elementary school didn't have any advantage. That is, those of us who were the best students came from regular elementary schools.
What irks me most is that nobody bats an eye when we devote resources to let the most promising athletes and musicians develop their skills in specialized, exclusive settings, but a promising mathematician?
In my elementary school there was a one-morning-a-week enrichment program for GATE kids, but some of my classmates left for a dedicated GATE school. When I met them again in middle school--which was my normal in-bound school but also had a GATE track and might have been the GATE destination--it seemed to me that the kids who went to the GATE elementary school didn't have any advantage. That is, those of us who were the best students came from regular elementary schools.